The Choke Page 5

  I saw the Worlleys come out of Dray Road and watched as they turned into the trail. Jamie, Lachie, Kathy, Jacky, Ee, Tyler and a new one I didn’t know. It had been a year since the fall-out. A year since we’d been friends. Jamie called out to me, ‘Justine! Justine!’

  The cousin I hadn’t seen before said, ‘Meow.’

  Kathy had her head down.

  ‘Justine! Justine!’ the cousins sang out.

  I kept my eyes on my feet. There was nobody else there, only the Worlleys and me.

  Jamie called out, ‘Hey, Justine, can you hear me?’

  The other cousin said, ‘Meow, meow.’

  Jamie said, ‘You know what a pussy is, don’t you, Justine?’

  I walked faster.

  ‘Do you, Justine? Do you know what a pussy is? Have you learned yet? Has Pop taught you?’

  I looked around for cars or people but there were none. I wished Kirk and Steve were with me.

  ‘You know you were the first one to touch my scar?’ said Jamie. He was catching up to me. ‘You remember that? It’s my turn to see your scar.’

  ‘What scar?’

  ‘You know—your scar,’ he said, close to me now. ‘The one every girl has.’

  ‘I haven’t got a scar.’

  ‘Yes, you do. Can I have a look?’

  The other cousins—Lachie, Jacky, Ee, Tyler and the new one—stood behind Jamie. Only Kathy stayed on the other side of the road. Jamie stepped closer to me. He was taller now. ‘Here, puss puss,’ he said. He used to go so fast down the slide. He went down on his front, on his back, he went down sitting, he went down face first, then feet first, over and over, laughing in the bubbles. He was faster than all of us, his scar from the dogfight red and glowing. ‘Here, puss.’ He flicked his fingers at the front of my skirt, between my legs.

  I pushed his hand back. He would have been fifteen by then and bigger than me.

  Jamie said, ‘Easy does it.’ He grabbed at my skirt again. ‘Show us your scar.’

  The other cousins around him laughed and then they stopped. They looked at each other. It was quiet outside of the Worlleys and me. It was a flatness that stretched and spread all the way to the line that joined the sky to the world. Was this what Kathy saw with her other eye?

  Jamie stuck his hand up the front of my dress and pinched.

  Lachie said, ‘We better go, Jamie.’

  Kathy started to walk down the road on the opposite side. The cousins were backing away, following her.

  Jamie didn’t notice them—he was only looking at me.

  I said, ‘Fuck off.’ I was shaking.

  He said, ‘What did you say?’

  I said, ‘Fuck off.’ I wished I had a weapon. Steve’s pocketknife—I’d hold it to Jamie’s neck, I’d stick it in.

  ‘That’s what I thought you said.’ He nodded towards the river. ‘Let’s go for a walk in the trees over there.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come on, just over there.’ He took my hand and tried to lead me towards the trees.

  I pulled away. ‘No!’

  He pushed me onto my back on the wet grass. When I looked up I couldn’t see the other Worlleys. I tried to get away. Jamie pushed me down and sat on me. ‘No! No!’ I bucked and kicked out my legs but he leaned forward and pinned my arms to the ground. The grass squelched underneath us.

  ‘How old are you now?’

  I twisted my head from side to side as he leaned over me. ‘Fuck off!’ I said.

  He put his face close to mine. ‘Don’t talk to me like that—I’m fifteen,’ he said. I kept wiggling underneath him, bucking up and down and kicking. ‘Keep going, that feels good, Jussy.’

  ‘Get off me!’ I said. Jamie reached back, lifted my skirt and touched me under my pants. I tried to kick him and push him away. ‘Get off me!’ I struggled against him. Then I heard a car coming down the highway. Jamie turned around to look.

  It was a white truck with a single blue door. The bull bar was hung with pieces of orange twine and there was rust along the bottom of the tray. It was my dad’s truck.

  Dad slowed down when he saw us. He stopped the truck. I hadn’t seen him from the start of the second term to the finish. He came around the front, his long legs fast, and Jamie scrambled away from me. My dad grabbed him and held him against the side of his truck by the front of his shirt. ‘Jamie fucken Worlley.’ Dad spoke the words slow, with space between each one, as if he had all the time in the world. His face was set without lights; you couldn’t go inside it. Jamie didn’t say anything. His eyes were wide, and there was breath coming hard in and out of his nose. He was trying to look away from my dad but Ray’s face was too close. ‘What were you doing to my little girl?’

  Jamie said, ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Nothing. Just having fun.’

  ‘That’s what I’m going to do now,’ said Dad. ‘Have myself some fun. Get in the truck, Justine.’

  I didn’t move; I stood by the side of the road as if I was frozen.

  ‘Do as you’re told and get in the truck,’ said Dad over his shoulder.

  I ran, stumbling in the dirt, to the truck.

  Had Jamie and me been having fun? A year ago we had gone down the slide with bubbles in our hair and down our legs, across our backs and in our hands. Jamie Worlley had a scar and I was the first one to touch it. Everyone made a line behind me. There were so many of us I didn’t know who was a Worlley and who was a Lee. Then Pop had the fight with Ian Worlley and we didn’t have fun anymore.

  I watched as Dad smashed Jamie into the bull bar of the truck. Jamie’s head shot back. Dad slammed his fist into Jamie’s gut, and Jamie groaned. Dad hit him hard in the face and dropped him in the ditch. Then Dad spat on him. Jamie turned his face away. As my dad came towards the truck I saw his eyes, like black and shining glass.

  Dad got in the truck beside me. ‘Fucken behave yourself,’ he said, before turning the key. He wasn’t looking at me when he said the words. Fucken behave yourself. He was looking through the windscreen. Was it me he was telling, or the road ahead?

  Dad was angry with Jamie Worlley, but he was angry with me too. What was Jamie trying to do to me? I knew shadows of things; I could see the letters but didn’t know the order. I stole a look at Dad’s face as he drove; it was a door that wouldn’t open.

  I finished my Rice Bubbles and put the bowl in the sink. Outside the sun was shining. But it never dried Yolamundi. As I walked the trail to the bus stop I could still see the water leaking up through the ground, filling the ditches as if the Murray was looking for new pathways. I practised the hymn on the way. The holly bears a blossom as white as the lily flower, the holly bears a berry, as red as any blood. When Michael sang he pulled at the ends of the words, stretching them, tugging at their sides. Hollee-ee, bea-ears, berry-erry, b-b-b…I sang the way he did as I walked, I made the same sounds. As re-e-e-d! Re-ee-ee-d! Did Michael live on the inside of his body, or was his body him? Was I my body, or did I live inside it? I stepped around a puddle in the road. Michael’s eyes were green. I didn’t know any other green eyes, did I? When the bus pulled up to the stop I saw Worlleys looking at me through the windows.

  At school Dawn and Noreena were playing hopscotch at the front. Noreena threw the stone into the farthest square. ‘I like coffee, I like tea, I like the boys and the boys like me,’ she sang as she jumped.

  ‘Hi, Justine,’ said Dawn.

  Noreena gave the stone to Dawn and pointed at my skirt. ‘When did you last wash that?’ she said.

  I shrugged. Pop had to turn the spanner in the machine to do a wash. If he got the time wrong it stuck.

  Noreena shook her head.

  I looked down at my skirt. There was a dribble of yolk aiming for the hem.

  In class with Mrs Turning we had to write the word on a line under the picture. I knew the pictures. Castle. Soldier. Bridge. Michael’s pen scratched and jumped as he looked from the pictures to the lines. He started to write. Castle lik
e my hideout. Soldier like Pop. Bridge over the Murray at Moama. I closed my eyes and saw the letters for the words, but when I tried to write them they were backwards. It was the breech. There was no way to undo it. I picked at the yolk on my skirt. I noticed Michael staring at my page. His arms and neck and leg shook and swayed but his eyes stayed steady on my work.

  When the playlunch bell rang Michael put the crutches under his arms, then he pulled himself to standing. One of his legs worked better than the other. Dawn and Noreena waited for me in the corridor. I watched as Michael swung towards the door.

  ‘Coming, Justine?’ said Dawn.

  ‘Coming,’ I said.

  Noreena said, ‘Elastics?’ She took a long white elastic from her bag. Dawn and me stood opposite each other at the play squares while Noreena put the elastic around the backs of our legs. ‘Jump, jump, knees up high, jump, jump, kick the sky, jump, jump, who’s the best? Touch the band and fail the test!’ I looked across at Michael, sitting at the benches by himself, eating from his fruit box, his book open on the table.

  In the afternoon we had to write words on the blackboard and join the sounds. Mrs Turning was at the front of the classroom with her wooden pointer. She said, ‘The first sound is c—what is the next sound, please?’

  Lots of the kids put up their hands. Michael wrote something on his page. Sarah Lockey said, ‘The next sound is on, Mrs Turning.’

  ‘Correct, Sarah,’ said Mrs Turning.

  Michael had already written something; N first then O. I changed it the other way so the O came first. O N. It zigzagged and jumped, but I could see what it was. On. Michael knew the answer. I looked at him; he looked back at me, his eyes steady, while the rest of him jerked and shook, as if the person pulling the strings was excited.

  9.

  When I came home from school I found Pop out the back breaking up boards. ‘Where’s Dad?’ I asked him.

  ‘How should I know?’ He threw a plank into the coals, and sat down on his camp chair. I sat on the back step. Pop said, ‘Here, chook chook; here, Missy.’ The chooks came close. Pop bent down towards them. ‘Here, chook chook chook.’ He picked up one of the girls and smoothed its feathers. ‘Hey, chook; hey, Lady; hey, little Lady,’ he said. He made a soft kissing sound. The chook clucked and its head moved in tiny jerks, this way and that way, in Pop’s lap. I took off my shoes and wiggled my toes. ‘I gave up waiting for your old man a long time ago,’ Pop said to the chook. But I knew that wasn’t true; I knew he was waiting, just like me.

  That night Pop’s gut trouble came early. He lay on his bed, a hand across his stomach. Pop didn’t know the bug was there when he left Burma; it was hiding in his lining, feeding on the layers. The bug liked to feel Pop’s small tight gut around him, holding him in like a blanket, a cocoon. I wish we could let Cockyboy at it. He’d peck it like a worm and swallow it whole.

  When Aunty Rita visited she said, ‘See a doctor, Dad, and stay off the booze.’

  When I’ve drunk the same amount of beer as the blood that flowed, that’s when I’ll give it up, that’s when, that’s when, not till then, goddamn it! Pop told her to piss off and leave him alone.

  Tonight he lay on his bed with his face turned to the wall. When it was dark I said, ‘Are you making dinner, Pop?’

  Pop said, ‘Bugger off.’

  There was still a whole night to go. I went into my room and cut out a car with a double exhaust. Later, when I walked past Pop’s room on the way to the kitchen, I heard him talking to the wall. ‘You bastards. Christ! You monkeys! You black-haired scum. For what?’ He groaned and drank from his beer, trying to drown the bug.

  I walked out to the back-house. I looked in the windows and saw my face in the glass. I walked all around it, dragging my hands along the walls. It felt cold. Pop told me Aunty Rita, Dad’s sister, used to live in the back-house, before she left home. Now Aunty Rita worked at Tarban Creek as an electrical nurse. I met her once, when I was four, after I had been living at Pop’s Three for a year. She came to visit from Sydney. She was tall like Dad, and she had the same shining black hair and white skin. But her eyes were different, as if the circles were only covers. If you lifted them, you would find the electricity from Tarban Creek, balanced inside her.

  The time she visited I was out the back collecting feathers. Cockyboy was perched on the top rail, watching me. Aunty Rita stepped through the kitchen door into the yard. Dad was just behind her. ‘Oh, Ray…’ she said, her eyes on me. She shook her head as if she couldn’t believe something. She looked over her shoulder, back at him. ‘What did you bloody do to get so lucky?’ She walked down to me. ‘I’m your Aunty Rita,’ she said to me. I thought she was going to cry. She put her fist to her mouth and knocked it against her lips. ‘I can’t believe I never met you before.’

  Dad said, ‘Whose fault is that?’

  Aunty Rita kept her eyes on me. She said, ‘Nobody’s, Ray.’ She kneeled down in front of me. ‘I brought you a present, Justine.’ She pulled a parcel wrapped in paper from her bag. She said, ‘I didn’t know what to get you.’

  As I took the present from her, some of the brown chook feathers fell from my hand and stuck to Aunty Rita’s sleeve.

  Dad said, ‘What do you say, Justine?’

  I didn’t know. What do you say? I looked at Aunty Rita’s boots on the dirt.

  Aunty Rita called back, ‘What do you say, Ray?’

  Dad went inside. Cockyboy jumped down from the gate.

  ‘Pop’s still got a bastard rooster, I see,’ said Aunty Rita. ‘Want to open your present?’

  I nodded. We tore off the paper. It was purple pyjamas inside with a train driving across the front. The train had a smile, half its wheels were off the track, as if it was dancing. I looked up at her. Could I wear them? Could I wear them now?

  ‘You want to try them on?’ my Aunty Rita asked me.

  ‘Can I?’

  ‘’Course you can.’

  I ran inside and took off my skirt and my jumper and pulled on the pyjamas. They felt soft against my skin. The train danced against my chest. I went back out and saw Aunty Rita in the kitchen talking with Pop.

  ‘You get used to it pretty quick,’ she said. ‘You learn the signs. You know who to watch out for…’

  Aunty Rita saw me and said, ‘Hey! Justine, they fit you perfectly.’

  Pop raised his eyebrows.

  Dad came in. He sat down and pulled out his pouch of White Ox. ‘They’re pyjamas, Justine,’ he said. ‘You can wear them tonight when you go to bed.’

  I didn’t want to wait until it was night. I wanted to wear them now.

  Aunty Rita said, ‘Oh, come on, let her wear them now.’

  I turned to Pop. ‘Can I, Pop?’

  ‘Wear what you like,’ said Pop, looking at Dad.

  Dad lit his White Ox. ‘How’s the nuthouse?’ he said to Aunty Rita.

  ‘It’s not a nuthouse.’

  ‘Not after you use the pads, hey?’ said Dad, blowing out smoke.

  I ran my hands down my new pyjamas, then I took some steps, like the dancing train. I sat on the kitchen floor and spun. I put one leg in the air. Aunty Rita clapped. ‘What a show,’ she said. ‘What a great show! More!’

  I looked at my dad.

  Dad took a long smoke, then he said to Aunty Rita, ‘How’s Naomi?’

  Aunty Rita frowned at Dad.

  ‘That’s her name, right? Naomi?’ said Dad.

  Pop drew in breath. Aunty Rita’s face turned red and the electricity that travelled with her from Sydney came out from under her clothes, at her trouser bottoms and around her collar. ‘She’s fine,’ said Aunty Rita.

  ‘She’s a doctor, right?’ said Dad.

  ‘Yeah, she is.’ Aunty Rita glanced at Pop. His face was tight, his mouth hard, like he was trying to bite down on something. He looked hot, as if the flames from his fire had singed his cheeks. Pop got up and stood at the sink, trying to get closer to the taps.

  ‘You met at the hospital, didn’t you
?’ said Dad.

  Aunty Rita nodded. ‘Yeah. Yeah, we did.’

  The smoke from Pop’s White Ox rose above his head.

  ‘Hospital romance,’ said Dad.

  On the floor I saw brown chook feathers that had come inside. Caught on my clothes and Aunty Rita’s.

  ‘Ray,’ said Aunty Rita. ‘Don’t.’

  ‘What sort of doctor is she?’ said Ray.

  ‘Fuck off, Ray,’ said Aunty Rita.

  I saw Pop’s hands spread, holding the edge of the sink, knuckles white.

  ‘What sort of doctor is she?’ Every time Dad spoke it was light, like a ball being thrown into the air, easy, like a breeze, but under it was heavy as lead.

  Aunty Rita turned to Dad. ‘Just an ordinary doctor, Ray. She works with the women at the hospital.’

  ‘Really?’ said Dad. ‘You’re in good hands, then. Nice. Sweet.’ The smoke Dad blew in a stream to the ceiling pressed its way into the corners. ‘You’re doing alright for yourself, Rita. She hot?’

  ‘She is hot,’ said Aunty Rita. ‘She’s really fucken hot.’

  Pop turned around from the sink. ‘Bugger this,’ he said.

  ‘Bugger what, Dad?’ Aunty Rita snapped.

  ‘You know what. This bloody business.’

  ‘What business?’ I could almost see Aunty Rita’s heart pounding behind her shirt.

  ‘Bloody unnatural, Rita! Jesus! What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘What is, Dad? What’s unnatural?’

  ‘I’m off to the pub. You guys want anything?’ said Dad, standing.

  ‘You’re a fucken prick, Ray,’ said Aunty Rita.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said Ray.

  ‘What’s not natural, Dad?’ Aunty Rita asked.

  ‘You know what I’m talking about,’ Pop said.

  ‘Say it, Dad,’ said Aunty Rita.

  ‘Don’t make me say the bloody words. It’s bad enough…’

  ‘What words? What won’t you say?’ Aunty Rita said.